Continuing the collection that started in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will spotlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Tales, introduced by Absopure.
By David Woelkers, Jr.
The evaluate of an athlete can be discovered not just in their talent, but their skill to roll with what life throws at them.
Senior men’s tennis player Nino Ehrenschneider is aware of that very first hand, getting experienced to navigate a unique training procedure and the COVID-19 pandemic on his way to earning a College of Michigan degree.
Even his selection to go after a degree at all was the final result of his capacity to navigate unsure waters while Ehrenschneider took courses back again residence in Germany, it was primarily to provide as a backup program.
“I determined to enjoy tennis and try out and earn my card for like six months, but I even now signed in Germany for faculty and analyzed athletics management for two semesters,” Ehrenschneider mentioned. “Kind of the reasoning driving it was just to keep the prospect of heading to faculty in the U.S. If you acquire a hole 12 months that usually takes extended than nine months, you shed your eligibility. So there was some contemplating at the rear of it, but just after large college, my 1st intention was to go skilled. Throughout the hole year, I sort of recognized that I was not all set nevertheless.”
Ehrenschneider was significantly from the first tennis participant to mood his professional aspirations straight out of higher university. Compared with other areas, Europe often leaves these types of players with out an apparent route to strengthen their online games.
“We never really have that program in Europe wherever you can participate in a sport while having a proper higher education training,” Ehrenschneider explained. “It is not genuinely a point in Europe — having a scholarship, earning a degree and taking part in in common. Because of that, I hardly ever supposed to go to college or university, but I understood I had to give myself a very little little bit a lot more time and education and learning has often been something that was truly crucial to me. I imagine it is really necessary.
“I didn’t know a lot about American school at all before. I did not know about the College of Michigan and how wonderful it is to get a diploma listed here and go to college right here, so I talked to folks and they claimed, ‘Yeah, this is a fantastic university and you must undoubtedly do this.'”
Just after matriculating to Michigan, Ehrenschneider chose not to go on pursuing activity administration. Instead, he took on a path of analyze close to to his heart.
“I guess I was often into the atmosphere since the commencing when I was minor,” Ehrenschneider stated. “I in fact joined a non-revenue firm identified as Plan for the Planet and I was an ambassador there and realized a lot about the surroundings. I’m also a nature man. I just like to slow down and discover my inner peace a little bit there since, I don’t know, for me, time stands even now if you spend time with mother nature.
“When I came to Michigan, I wanted to test some thing else from activity administration, and I was looking into the sustainability management path. That is why I also did the enterprise small, for the reason that I am genuinely intrigued in that route, not strictly environmental science but additional taking the classes of environmental science and making use of that to organization and understanding about acquiring sustainable options in the business subject.”
Inspite of not obtaining designed it his Strategy A, Ehrenschneider has no regrets about putting his qualified vocation on pause. Not only has his time in Ann Arbor created him a better scholar and participant, but it also has manufactured him a far more resilient guy as well.
“So I arrived to faculty in January 2021 and it was nonetheless at the height of COVID-19, so we lived in the dorms and there was no person there since of COVID,” Ehrenschneider mentioned. “All the non-athletes ended up remote, lessons had been distant and I struggled a great deal in the beginning. I experienced remaining my consolation zone, which a great deal of worldwide learners converse about, but I struggled with that primarily since I was isolated physically as very well as mentally.
“I was happy when Could came and I could go again residence my freshman summertime, but when I came again and matters experienced opened up and there was soccer time, that sort of opened me up a minor bit and received me extra snug with remaining awkward.
“I think I have learned a great deal much more off the court docket than on it in my time below, specifically expanding my comfort zone and remaining more open up-minded and discovering a great deal about myself. College or university time is pretty diverse, incredibly energetic, but also before I had performed only for myself, whereas listed here I was surrounded by a workforce. I had to find out how to guide a crew, how to be a part model to younger teammates, and truly just how to embody the main values of the group.”
From across the globe to the College of Michigan, Ehrenschneider has taken an unorthodox highway that has proven his means to acquire any obstacle head on.
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